The Long Beach State men’s basketball team followed up its resilient overtime victory against UC Santa Barbara with a 78-64 win over Hawai’i on Saturday night at the Stan Sheriff Center.
LBSU (11-12, 5-3) lost its starting point guard Justin Bibbins in the first half with a hamstring injury and Noah Blackwell in the second when he fouled out. Yet, the 49ers maintained the lead for 38 of the 40 minutes.
With 3:37 remaining in the game, Hawaii’s (16-3, 5-1) junior forward Mike Thomas’ layup trimmed the 49ers lead to 66-63.
After that, the Hawai’i home crowd’s intensity reached its peak. However, LBSU did not collapse as it shutout the Rainbow Warriors for the remainder of the game.
The 49ers started putting the game away for good when junior Bradford Jones delivered a pass to sophomore Gabe Levin, who finished with a layup off the glass and extended the LBSU lead to seven with 1:38 remaining.
On the ensuing Hawai’i possession, senior Nick Faust intercepted a pass and extended LBSU’s lead to double-digits by draining a three from the wing.
Closing out games has been an Achilles’ heel for the for the 49ers this season, but they were able to put the Rainbow Warriors away on Saturday. However, LBSU had a more difficult time doing so on Thursday night against UC Santa Barbara.
Despite some late-game heroics by the Gauchos, LBSU defeated the Gauchos, 80-70, in an overtime thriller inside the Walter Pyramid.
Trailing by three with one second left in Thursday’s game, UCSB’s Michael Bryson pulled up from beyond the arc and drew a foul on Faust that sent Bryson to the charity stripe for three free throws.
Facing the front of the student section, the senior out of Sacramento made all three free throws without hesitation, sending the game into overtime.
There, LBSU regrouped and outscored the Gauchos 10-0 to seal the victory.
“Overtime was a disaster for us,” Bryson said. “We didn’t execute, didn’t take care of the ball and didn’t get stops on defense and we let them get to the charity stripe and get easy points to create separation.”
49er coach Dan Monson said he hopes that Thursday night’s victory can be a step in the right direction, considering that LBSU was 2-8 in games decided by seven or less coming in.
“We haven’t dug a game out like that all year, so it was good to see,” Monson said.
Faust had a game-and career-high 34 points and said he knew early on that his shot was on.
“I just really wanted to win really bad,” Faust said.
The 49ers started the game by completing nine of their first thirteen field goal attempts in the first 11 minutes, but only made two of their last 17 shot attempts to close out the half.
The 49ers will host Cal State Northridge next on Saturday at 4 p.m.